it's thursday december fifth five pm in washington d.c. i'm meghan lopez and you are watching our t.v. we want to go straight to breaking news this hour former south african president nelson mandela just passed away a short time ago he was ninety five years old now mandela has been viewed as a hero to people all around the world and was the biggest leader against apartheid his health has been failing consistently over the past few months due to a recurring lung infection he was last in the hospital in september but was discharged and allowed to return home he was a nobel peace prize la tourette and one of south africa's most beloved presidents of all time parties polis layer brings us

a look back at this great leaders life he's the man who pulled a troubled and divided land back from the brink of civil war the man who after twenty seven tough years behind bars walks free from prison in his heart was not to avenge but i think the his greatest legacy to this country is reconciliation. in the last three decades the world tirelessly polished the image of nelson mandela and image recognized around the world only coca-cola is better known better men who struggle for racial equality again south africa's ruling white minority had a dark side the world has conveniently forgotten about nelson mandela and of and leader of the struggle. a radical. someone. embraced violence and as a necessary political instrument at a particular juncture in our history mandela and his colleagues were forced

underground when the authorities banned the movement in one nine hundred sixty this house was the secret headquarters of the african national congress it was here in the early sixty's that mandela and his comrades launched the armed struggle it was also here that most of them were wasted put on trial and sentenced to life in prison at what was known as the rivonia trial in one thousand nine hundred sixty four mandela and ten of his colleagues faced the death penalty for sabotage one of the men alongside him in the dock was dennis goldberg an engineer and bomb maker in the sabotage campaign he spent twenty two years behind bars nelson mandela was called a terrorist because he took up arms against their party government. governments like to support governments they claim legitimacy the west had big investments gold mines industry the sea transport links to the east the type route was very important they supported the apartheid government any opponent was there for

a terrorist it's don't fall apart it would have lasted as long as it did if the world community hadn't closed ranks behind the white government british prime minister margaret thatcher denounced mandela as a terrorist and was once quoted as saying anyone who thought the a.n.c. could rule south africa was living in cloud cuckoo land years later she welcomed mandela to downing street. washington also did a one hundred eighty degree turn although it was only in two thousand and eight that if we moved all references to mandela and his colleagues as terrorists from its database the change in heart according to this man whose lawyer father was an activist in the south african underground was because of a change in the political climate with her stroke over glasnost the collapse of the soviet union in one nine hundred ninety. the self-interest of the west in terms of preserving or protecting south africa from falling into the hands of the communists . became less and less significant and less and less important mandela was not

alone in world leaders who endured a love hate relationship at the hands of the west darlings of the waste one moment villains the next libya's moammar gadhafi egypt's hosni mubarak we keep leaks founder julian assange to name but a few south african journalist chris bishop believes the one nine hundred sixty four trial that saw mandela and his comrades sentenced to life helped turn the world in their favor during the trial. these gentleman who are on trial the rivonia trial as they went from being the accused of being people on in the dark slowly transformed they became the benjamin franklin's of africa they became the freedom fighters they began the man of principle who is standing up merely for the rights of others and it's only to turn world opinion around from a vile terrorist to one of the greatest freedom fighters to have ever walked the

earth the story of nelson mandela is remarkable a man who stood up for the rights of people everywhere but also a familiar tale of governments putting a garland of flowers around your neck one day and a rope the next police fear r.t.e. johannesburg south africa. and we are showing you right now a live look outside of nelson mandela's house again at nelson mandela the most beloved president up. south africa's history died today and ninety five years old he is and so johannes south africa people are obviously gathering please that tune in to our dot com for the latest information coming out and of course we'll be bringing it to you all night well fourteen so-called computer hacktivists associated with anonymous appeared in california federal court today over charges that they conducted a quarter native cyber attack on pay pal and master card the distributed denial of services attack or the d.d. o. s. hack overwhelmed pay pal's online services back in two thousand and eleven and

temporarily knocks the company off line today the pay pal fourteen reached a plea deal that will choir each to pay five thousand six hundred dollars and pleaded to a felony which will be dismissed after a year with good behavior two members of the group did not want to potential felony on their record and instead took a misdemeanor charge and ninety days in prison this hack was part of operation payback which was in retaliation for pay pal refusing to accept or perform financial transactions for the secret spilling organization wiki leaks in the wake of the biggest document drop in u.s. history to fill us in on the very latest i was joined by one of the attorneys for the group stanley cohen as well as our web producer andrew blake who has been following this case very closely i started by asking stanley to explain the plea deal and the latest that's coming out of that courthouse. we've been involved in negotiations for over a year and negotiations based koncz strength not weakness based upon principle not

acquiescence that did not involve cooperation and did not involve any of the defendants for announcing their conduct they will stood up and said we did what you said we did we was critical was civil disobedience we believe we appropriate actor must seem unwilling to pay the price after tremendous amount of negotiations and back and forth in challenges we reached a conclusion a deal with eleven of the defendants pleading guilty to a felony count then to a misdemeanor count sentencing adjourned for a year if there are no new arrests at the end of the year the felony is dismissed the misdemeanor is left in place and people will sensibly get conditional discharges at that point the restitution the amount of fifty six hundred dollars per person paper out that it was five point five million as a result of this plea disposition pay-pal may have been getting as much as eighty thousand dollars back and these folks who took

a principled stand continue. with their principles in fact and continue determined to. play an active role in the future of their lives the community in the world so what is next for this group are is there anything against them using the internet for instance or being able to log on anything like that you know the conditions they've been on pretrial release for almost two years two years nominal conditions they're allowed to continue with their lives there'd been no changes their students their bloggers their writers are on internet they're on twitter they talk. you know they continue with their lives this is this is it's comparable in some jurisdictions to the deferred prosecution which basically says ok we're going to put this off for a year and if everything works out fine the case gets dismissed here in the day everything works out fine the defendants are going. i get a misdemeanor and as one who defendant said to me or the person said to me when

they walked out of the court system meter is a badge of honor and courage for stanley cohen one of the attorneys for these and this group of anonymous activist thank you so much for joining us and please keep us updated as this trial kind of continues or as these that these people continue and within the next year now and are let's talk about the precedent being set here has anyone ever been successfully prosecute. you know as a tack you know it's really weird that we're not necessarily setting a precedent here because they put in this guilty plea had this gone to trial and we had a group of you know civilians get up there and hear about what's being called a hack but is really just overloading a website a whole bunch of times then we might have a precedent we might find out that oh if you did also website you can have to do this you don't have to do this and they can they can screw you for really long time there was actually case several years ago kind of the infancy of the whole anonymous movement when some kid head did a detox attacks where you just overflowed a website he did it against the church of scientology they actually turned around

they went after him and he served a year in prison for clicking a button that took down a scientology dot dot church i don't know what the hell they're their website it's called there's another related to this incident there's another one happening right now in the eastern district court for i'm sorry the eastern district region in federal court just down the road where a handful of legit hacktivist operated a similar campaign against a bunch of anti-censorship websites also tell you for this whole kind of snafu that broke out after we began releasing all sorts of confidential information back in two thousand and ten so that just happened and then you know right now that's happening right now but just earlier earlier this month i believe around a week ago a fellow was sentenced to a few years probation and ordered to pay one hundred eighty three thousand dollars fine i believe one hundred eighty thousand dollars restitution to koch industries big corporations run by dave and charles koch for taking down one of their websites

momentarily with adidas a few years ago now meanwhile journalist glenn greenwald who is the journalist that was working with edward snowden all of those n.s.a. leaks is reportedly working with the founder of e-bay which is the parent company of pay pal on a new media venture so i want to bring up a couple of tweets that the e-bay founder wrote his name is pierre omidyar he tweeted whatever. do you think of at wiki leaks tactics we know more about our world through their journalism donate the a peep a pow but this certain also cation considering pay pal was part of the blockade that attempted to start wiki leaks of those funds so i want to read another tweet that says this transparency organization responded by saying the blockade has cost wiki leaks tens of millions we announced successful changes in policy right after the lawsuit so what do you make of this is agreement and more importantly. how kind

of saying this that these leaks are ok these ones are not it is a bit selective but also human there's a lot of players involved here and you know this really shouldn't come down to just what peter says or with julian or anyone from wiki leaks says there's a lot of people involved. obviously massive massive corporations but you know it does raise a lot of interesting points about bill one is a leak ok one is a digital protest ok and who's got the money to say what can and can't work but you know going into this pay pal was looking at receiving upwards of five million dollars in restitution for the crimes alleged crimes committed by these hacktivist and now they're looking at receiving around eighty k. so a lot of people were building this up disabled you know people had all the time to go out there and say you know don't tackle these kids don't go put him in jail and appear recently just made a statement this week saying you know he wanted to see for the pay pal fourteen it was hoping that you know by pleading his case at least bring

a little bit of media attention because it's been almost three years now and many people talking about those. blake thank you so much for filling us in and i will turn to our viewers to your website r.t. dot com for the latest on all of these cases. well year after year i pro-business group known as the american legislative exchange council or alec has gathered for one week to discuss domestic business policy this week the group has come to d.c. it's amazing bob it was not alone protesters gathered right outside. what they. already had that you know we're going to let them know it is not ok for them to have a private meeting but not for nothing by the media coverage of this writing legislation they have backlog every day all right demonstrators demanded that alex stay out of american politics in a bid for transparency alec allow members of the media to attend this year's meeting parties that sam sachs was there and brings us an inside look at the

conference. i'm here at alex two thousand and thirteen states and nation policy summit in washington d.c. where senator ted cruz addressed the conference just a moment ago alec of course is the american legislative exchange council a conservative pro-business organization that brings together mostly republican state lawmakers from around the country and teams them up with representatives from corporations like exxon mobil eighteen c. and pfizer you can actually tell who's who around here with lawmakers wearing red badges that say legislative member and corporate representatives wearing blue badges that's a private sector member now alec has often been referred to as a dating service for lawmakers and businesses together here legislators and corporate representatives are crafting and voting on model legislation that's going to be done behind closed door meetings a little bit later this afternoon these are known as task forces no media is allowed in there's an education task force there's an energy task force the tax

policy task force it's basically organized in a similar way that our congress is organized into committees now once legislation is passed out of these task forces is then carried with lawmakers back to their. states where they try to pass it through their respective state legislatures to become actual laws so basically that's how it works and it's this activity that threatens progressives who argue that this organization acts as a shadow government churning out corporatists legislation in forcing elected lawmakers to pledge allegiance to corporate interests rather than their own voters back home members here say nothing nefarious is going on i first came to alec over a decade ago when i was serving in the bush administration i've been privileged to work with alec in the federal government i've been privileged to work with alec when i was back in texas at the texas public policy foundation leading the tenth

amendment center and i am proud to stand with alec today and i will tell you this my advice to alec is very very simple. stand your ground but looking at the conservative vendors on hand and what's on the docket in closed door task force meetings you can clearly see an agenda emerging alec has operated largely in the shadows but the organization did release some of its priorities for this year and we can get a sense of what laws are being written and voted on at this summit although alex still keep secret which corporate interests are be hind writing each model bill for example there's that this model bill under consideration this week opposing the e.p.a.'s ability to regulate greenhouse gases under the clean air act a proposal that supported by the big oil industry or there's this bill out of the international relations task force that opposes regulations requiring country of origin labeling on food in grocery stores a proposal supported by big guy plus there are model bills to weaken public sector

unions as well as to make the affordable care act or obamacare more difficult to implement these are all conservative priorities but passing model bills that could become law is down the road is only one priority this year for alec the other is mending fences as the guardian reported this week alec is facing a fund raising crisis after hundreds of lawmakers and dozens of corporations left the organization over controversy created by alex support of stand your ground laws and voter id laws it's reported that alec is facing a one point four million dollar budget hole this year and has launched a new initiative known as the prodigal son project to lure corporations and their donations back into the organization. but there's little concern on the faces of members in the halls around here who dined together on flay and will later vote together on corporate friendly laws emboldened by the dysfunction down the street

in congress alec is taking the responsibility of governing into their own hands and that is exactly how corporate america wants it. it washington d.c. same sex party. fast food workers in over one hundred cities put down their special laws and picked up picket signs today and in the nationwide protest for better wages the goal of the protest is to raise the federal minimum wage to fifteen dollars an hour which would amount to sortie one thousand two hundred dollars for a full time employee before taxes now that is just about eight thousand dollars above the federal poverty line for a family of four at the moment right now the minimum wage in the country is seven twenty five an hour in some states that number is much higher but so is the average cost of living here the eight states with the highest minimum wages they range from eight dollars an hour in california in massachusetts to nine nineteen in washington

and the home to washington state's international airport might be a testing ground for the future of minimum wage the city of sea-tac is the first in the country to a prove a fifteen dollar minimum wage for last month voters passed the ballot measure that would give airport workers a pay raise of more than double the current federal minimum pay at the beginning of this next year and president obama is addressing the minimum wage in his speech yesterday he said other cities might need to begin to follow suit you know that there are airport workers and fast food workers. nurses systems retail sales people who work their tails off that are still living or barely above average and that's why it's well past the to raise a minimum wage that in real right thank you were very true thank you. for more on the fast food protests we turn now to our correspondent marino. what began one year

ago here in new york city with just two hundred employees has exploded into arguably the biggest wave of protest in the history of america's fast food industry thousands of fast food workers in more than one hundred cities throughout the country have been walked off the job thursday demanding a raise in minimum wage and the right to unionize without retaliation now the organization spearheading this movement is called fast forward and workers that are participating in this strike are employed at a major chain restaurants including mcdonald's burger king wendy's and k.f.c. and while the fast food industry remains a two hundred billion dollars industry the median wage for the service were is like the cashiers the crew the national median wage is just eight dollars ninety four

cents an hour here in new york many of the fifty plus thousand fast food workers earn even less just seven dollars and twenty five cents an hour now because of the low wage was one employees at fast food restaurants tell me they live in poverty forced to rely on public assistance or go to food shelters to feed their family many other fast food workers are living in shelters because their salary can't cover the rent now even worse is that this problem is expanding low wage jobs have been accounted for the bulk of the new jobs added in the so-called u.s. recovery and retail and fast food are among the fastest growing economic sectors in the united states right now what these strikers are demanding is fifteen dollars per hour and so far only one city in a washington state has met those demands as you could see. there is

a significant movie's presence here on the scene monitoring this day of action so far everything has remained relatively calm now in the meantime companies like mcdonald's burger king and wendy's have defended themselves saying that the low paid positions are just stepping stones to better positions but reports reveal that managerial jobs make up just two percent of all jobs in the fast food industry now these these restaurants have also said that raising the minimum wage will increase costs and force some workers out of a job but ironically as you can see the majority of these past workers have. more on the job to fight for a basic living wage a quality of life that the so-called american dream promises to all of its citizens we should also mention that this movement caused

a lot of support behind it lots of civil rights groups community leaders even new york city mayor elect bill de blasio has voiced his support for raising the minimum wage as you can see this is a huge movement in the united states taking place a day of action there going from location to location and we'll be following them as they continue walking reporting from new york. r.t. in the florida ever growing scientists and rescue crews are desperately attempting to save a group of beached whales the group of pilot whales is stranded off the shoreline of everglades national park in southern florida at least ten of the whales have died six of natural causes and four of them were euthanized for more from florida artie's nicholas o'donovan reports. last couple of days of being very sad and very disturbing down here on the shores of southern florida on wednesday well the news spread out that a very large group of up to forty five pilot whales that stranded themselves off

the shores of the everglades national park marine officials coast guards and plenty of volunteers are trying to help those whales to get back to deeper waters but it actually all happened in a very remote area known as the highland beach this area as we say is very remote it's actually more than an hour away by boat of the nearest a boat ramp and obviously all of this is complicated in the rescue mission and today wad life officials say it's simply not looking good for the whales already ten of them have died four of them were euthanized due to their poor condition but it's not only the logistics of all this situation that is complicating the rescue it's actually the whales themselves many whales are simply beached themselves once and over again and the problem now is that the remaining whales simply just won't leave the coast guard has tried to herd the wells out of the banks but it was

simply impossible this loyalties just intriguing to ask humans but even more why would the whales come to the shallow waters in the first place it's not likely that it was an accident because pilot whales well they leave in deeper waters it's believed that it took this particular group several days to travel the twenty miles that separate those deep waters where they typically live to the shallow waters in the area that they were found there's different theories as to why did the whales end up in these shallow waters it could be that they were scared off by a predator that they were simply disorientated a lost soul or even scared off by an underwater says make movement it could be something social two it could be that they laid or got sick ale. or was too old and simply just just came to the shores to die and the rest of the group followed him as i say it's just impossible to know and each time that the that we have one of

these events we just learn more and more but it's still an enigma as for why these whales come to shore to die. that was artie's nicholas o'donovan reporting and there may be hope on the horizon wildlife officials say twenty of the whales appear to be swimming toward the deeper water several miles north of their previous location. well just one day after he blasted the environmental protection agency for not using so-called sound science republican congressman lamar smith held a hearing on space aliens representative smith who chairs the science space and technology committee of the house criticize rules the e.p.a. set on the amount of carbon pollution new power plants are allowed to emit this is the e.p.a. is way too slow or reverse the effects of climate change in a letter addressed to the head of the agency lamar smith wrote the agency is a stubborn insistence on placing its judgement above that of its science advisers

raises serious concerns that the a.p.a. as a rule making is based more on partisan politics than sound science but on wednesday he shot for the stars with a two hour long hearing called astrobiology the search for bio signatures in our solar system and beyond the discussion that is possibly just about life on other planets or the possibility of you know any more about these new. questions to ask are what could we find on these planets the atmospheres of these planets provide bio signatures that would indicate the presence of some form of rudimentary life and what would be the implications of such a discovery. critics are now questioning how lamar smith can see aliens as sound science but climate change as part of politics but danger will robinson there is a bigger issue at hand and this one is in our galaxy there are exactly five days

left in the houses official calendar year including today before lawmakers head out of town there are several serious issues that must be a drag. asked the most important of which is a new farms bill while hopes are high that a farm bill will be passed little else is expected from this congress so with so many important issues on the table ranging from the economy to immigration perhaps the real question here is should lawmakers be searching for aliens or focusing on the issues right here on planet earth. and we want to update you on the breaking news that we've been following former south african president nelson mandela just passed away a short time ago he was ninety five years old mandela has been viewed as a hero to people all around the world and was the biggest leader against apartheid his health has been failing consistently over the past few months due to a recurring lung infection he was last in the hospital in september but was

discharged and allowed to return home he was a nobel peace prize la tourette and one of south africa's most beloved presidents of all time so our hearts go out to his family that's going to for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r.t.m. america check our website for the latest on the nelson mandela story and follow me on twitter at meghan underscore lopez see a backyard eight. dramas that can't be ignored. story others you know. the street lights. to make your day. for absolutely. wrong.

councils here in the u.k. are calling for tougher laws to police aggressive bankers finally no longer will the banker beggars be shaking us down for yet more and outs and bailouts every time we passed the city no longer listening to them plead for more money printing and free credit facilities we're sick and tired of all the banker beggars harassing us every time we pass one of their toll booths. like this famous one hey i'm jimmy done it oh look i found it your banking system that i found trashed on the ground before me give me a true dollars it'll give it back give me a trillion i want another trillion more trillions give it to me give me. the. technology innovation all the developments from around. the future are covered.